Danny Hendon, owner of the embattled Danny's Family Car Wash chain and a longtime supporter of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, pleaded guilty today in federal court to identity fraud, the Associated Press is reporting.

Several business entities under the DFC umbrella are scheduled for change of plea hearings today in related charges.

DFC's general counsel later "submitted a signed certification letter to federal authorities indicating that as of April 23, 2011, DFC had terminated the employment of all 942 employees listed," according to the indictment.

But the feds say DFC turned right around and re-hired many of the employees it had axed.

The indictment states:

"Soon after 'terminating' the unauthorized employees in April 2011, DFC began rehiring many of the same individuals under new identities.

"In many instances, DFC's managers affirmatively assisted the employees in procuring identification documents and other personal identifiers that belonged to third parties (e.g., supplying employees with names, social security cards and numbers, and/or driver's licenses that belonged to others) to facilitate the rehiring."

I'd like to know why his daughter (Heather Hendon) hasn't been indicted. She joined her Dad's business (car washes) back in 2004 & is the VP of operations & took part in their practice of promoting identity fraud among their employees ...

Further I'd love to know why the truck washes (owned by Heather's Mom / Danny's ex wife) weren't hit in this investigation... as it is the same story over there as well.

FYI I am not a fan of sheriff joe but the MCSO had nothing to do with the raid or investigation on Danny's family car wash. It was an ice investigation and the MCSO doesn't have a say what the federal government does. I know for a fact that ICE had been investigating this for years and even warned Danny Hendon several
times.

When will the Feds. indict Arpaio he is the biggest "Crook" in Arizona?!

Arpaio not only turned a blind eye to his pal Danny's car washes, he sheilded them from his "Immigration Raids" while raiding Danny's competitor car washes, and even profited from M.C.S.O. car washes at Danny's while M.C.S.O. Deputies washed cars knowingly hand in hand with undocumented workers.

All profits went to the M.C.S.O. including money earned illegally!

The records of M.C.S.O. car wash money/proceeds is probably very interesting right Joe?

During these official M.C.S.O. car washes Arpaio was in fact one of Arizona's largest employers of undocumented workers, however Arpaio didn't care about the workers legal status as long as he was collecting the money from exploited labor.

Hendon has been a crook since he has been involved with Dannys - his attorneys are crooks - his accountants are crooks - his family are all crooks. I encourage Stephen to go to the Court Records and look up all the cases involving Dannys Car Wash - they had a racket: Start a car wash, sell it, do things to the new owners which caused them to fail, get the business back and sell it again - over and over, with their attorneys knowing exactly what they were doing. THe money wasn't in selling car washes or in cheating their workers - it was in selling the business locations multiple times.

@ExpertShot A lawyer I know has represented several people who had the misfortune of doing business with Danny Hendon, and were screwed out of thousands of dollars they were owed for their work. Hedon's name--and all of the shell LLC's he does business under--are all over the Superior Court docket like a bad rash. He's a snake, and it's about time karma caught up with him. Here's hoping he gets a long, well-deserved prison sentence.

@ConcernedCitizenAZ The Department of Justice SHOULD take on the political/business cabal in Arizona but they won't - it's like this in every Republicant state. Corruption that has been going on since Statehood is hard to root out and stop. Tombstone (cowboys v. wall street) was one time when the DOJ might have stopped it but they decided not to. It's all about the money and how many people the good old boys can cheat out of it. The answer - don't feed the trolls.